Hide And Seek

the body was actually in the house when Charles arrived.’

Charlie’s jaw dropped open. Rebus had never witnessed the effect in real life before.

‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘I’d say you were lucky, Charlie. I’d say that someone was moving the body downstairs and heard you arrive. Then they hid in one of the other rooms, maybe even that stinking bathroom, until you’d left. They were in the house all the time you were.’

Charlie swallowed. Then closed his mouth. Then let his head fall forward and began to weep. Not quite silently, so that his uncle caught the action, and smiled, nodding towards Rebus with satisfaction.

Rebus finished the chocolate. It had tasted of antiseptic, the same strong flavour of the corridor outside, the wards themselves, and this waiting room, where anxious faces buried themselves in old colour supplements and tried to look interested for more than a second or two. The door opened and Holmes came in, looking anxious and exhausted. He’d had the distance of a forty-minute car journey in which to mentally live his worst fears, and the result was carved into his face. Rebus knew that swift treatment was needed.

‘She’s fine. You can see her whenever you like. They’re keeping her in overnight for no good reason at all, and she’s got a broken nose.’

‘A broken nose?’

‘That’s all. No concussion, no blurred vision. A good old broken nose, curse of the bare-knuckle fighter.’

Rebus thought for one moment that Holmes was about to take offence at his levity. But then relief flooded the younger man and he smiled, his shoulders relaxing, head dropping a little as though from a sense of anticlimax, albeit a welcome one.

‘So,’ Rebus said, ‘do you want to see her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on, I’ll take you.’ He placed a hand on Holmes’s shoulder and guided him out of the door again.

‘But how did you know?’ Holmes asked as they walked up the corridor.

‘Know what?’

‘Know it was Nell? Know about Nell and me?’

‘Well now, you’re a detective, Brian. Think about it.’

Rebus could see Holmes’s mind take on the puzzle. He hoped the process was therapeutic. Finally, Holmes spoke.

‘Nell’s got no family, so she asked for me.’

‘Well, she wrote asking for you. The broken nose makes it hard to understand what she’s saying.’

Holmes nodded dully. ‘But I couldn’t be located, and you were asked if you knew where I was.’

‘That’s close enough. Well done. How was Fife anyway? I only get back there once a year.’ April 28th, he thought to himself.

‘Fife? It was okay. I’d to leave before the bust. That was a shame. And I don’t think I exactly impressed the team I was supposed to be part of.’

‘Who was in charge?’

‘A young DS called Hendry.’

Rebus nodded. ‘I know him. I’m surprised you don’t, at least by reputation.’

Holmes shrugged. ‘I just hope they nab those bastards.’

Rebus had stopped outside the door of a ward.

‘This it?’ Holmes asked. Rebus nodded.

‘Want me to come in with you?’

Holmes stared at his superior with something approaching gratitude, then shook his head.

‘No, it’s all right. I won’t stay if she’s asleep. One last thing though.’

‘Yes?’

‘Who did it?’

Who did it. That was the hardest part to understand. Walking back along the corridor, Rebus saw Nell’s puffy face, saw her distress as she tried to talk, and couldn’t. She had signalled for some paper. He had taken a notebook from his pocket, and handed her his pen. Then she had written furiously for a full minute. He stopped now and took out the notebook, reading it through for the fourth or fifth time that evening.

‘I was working at the library. A woman tried to push her way into the building, past the guard. Talk to him if you want to check. This woman then butted me on the face. I was trying to help, to calm her down. She must have thought I was interfering. But I wasn’t. I was trying to help. She was the girl in that photograph, the nude photograph Brian had in his briefcase last night in the pub. You were there, weren’t you, in the same pub as us? Not easy not to notice — the place was empty, after all. Where’s Brian? Out chasing more salacious pictures for you, Inspector?’

Rebus smiled now, as he had smiled then. She had guts, that one. He rather liked her, her face taped, eyes blackened. She reminded him a lot of Gill.

So, Tracy was leaving a silvery snail’s trail of chaos by which to follow her. Little bitch. Had she simply flipped, or was there a real motive for her trip to the University Library? Rebus leaned against the wall of the corridor. God, what a day. He was supposed to be between cases. Supposed to be ‘tidying things up’ before starting full time on the drugs campaign. He was supposed, for the sake of Christ, to be having things easy. That’d be the day.

The ward doors swung shut, alerting him to the figure of Brian Holmes in the corridor. Holmes seemed lacking direction, then spotted his superior and came walking briskly up the hall. Rebus wasn’t sure yet whether Holmes was invaluable, or a liability. Could you be both things at once?

‘Is she all right?’ he asked solicitously.

‘Yes. I suppose so. She’s awake. Face looks a bit of a mess though.’

‘Just bruises. They say the nose will heal. You’ll never know it was broken.’

‘Yes, that’s what Nell said.’

‘She talking? That’s good.’

‘She also told me who did it.’ Holmes looked at Rebus, who looked away. ‘What’s this all about? What’s Nell got to do with it?’

‘Nothing, so far as I know. She just happened to be in the wrong place, et cetera. Chalk it down to coincidence.’

‘Coincidence? That’s a nice easy word to say. Put it down to “coincidence” and then we can forget all about it, is that it? I don’t know what your game is, Rebus, but I’m not going to play it any longer.’

Holmes turned and stalked off along the hall. Rebus almost warned him that there was no exit at that end of the building, but favours weren’t what Holmes wanted. He needed a bit of time, a break. So did Rebus, but he had some thinking to do, and the station was the best place for that.

By taking them slowly, Rebus managed the stairs to his office. He had been at his desk fully ten minutes before a craving for tea had him reaching for the telephone. Then he sat back, holding in front of him a piece of paper on which he had attempted to set out the ‘facts’ of the ‘case’. He was chilled by the thought that he might be wasting time and effort. A jury would have to work hard to see any crime there at all. There was no suggestion that Ronnie had not injected himself. However, he had been starved of his supply, despite there being no shortage of dope in the city, and someone had moved his body, and left behind a packet of good heroin, hoping, perhaps, that this would be tested, found clean, and therefore death by misadventure would be recorded: a simple overdose. But the rat poison had been found.

Rebus looked at the paper. Already ‘perhapses’ and conjecture had entered the picture. Maybe the frame wasn’t right. So, turn the picture another way round, John, and start again.

Why had someone gone to the trouble of killing Ronnie? After all, the poor bugger would have topped himself given time. Ronnie had been starved of a fix, then given some, but had known this stuff to be less than pure. So doubtless he had known that the person who supplied it wanted him dead. But he had taken it anyway…. No, viewed this way round it was making even less sense. Start again.

Why would someone want Ronnie dead? There were several obvious answers. Because he knew something he shouldn’t. Because he possessed something he shouldn’t. Because he didn’t possess something he should. Which